Erin Langner
May 29, 2013, 8:30am
Rebuilding the Sublime: Peter Scherrer’s EVERYTHING RIGHT AND ANYWHERE NOW
“Getting out,” into the wilderness in western Washington is rarely a clean, easy experience; the nearly endless rainy season can act as a killjoy until the oversized ferns, mushroom patches and lush understories of its forests override the fact that you are standing in these pristine landscapes completely soaked. Bellingham artist Peter Scherrer’s dense, complicated paintings of the Pacific Northwest incorporate similar dynamics through their surfaces muddied with content, almost to point of deterrence (particularly when seen as reproductions).
April 29, 2013, 8:30am
Unpacked Cargo: Mary Iverson Inside and Out
Shipping containers have a strange relationship to the city of Seattle. Their accompanying series of orange and white cranes frame our skyline as highly visible but distantly silent landmarks. With imported products from Asia on the rise and easier movement across the Arctic Ocean due to climate change, the ever-larger stacks of building block-like crates and their colossal vessels that once seemed to be background noise for the city have become poignant emblems of the present. Washington artist Mary Iverson (NAP MFA Annual 2001) was ahead of the game on the relevance of the shipping container, interjecting it into familiar natural landscapes in her paintings and public art for years.
April 22, 2013, 8:30am
Painting Restraint: Julie Alpert’s Boundary at SOIL
Seattle artist Julie Alpert has a penchant for pushing ideas between the second and third dimension. Her installations often merge large scale, graphic murals with physical objects to create immersive, painted mashups that exist somewhere between contemporary surrealism and a utopic built environment. In her newest set of watercolors at SOIL, Alpert distills her hyper-saturated scenes into seventeen modest paintings that stretch and contract within their postcard-sized confines. The painted mounds seep across their surfaces, building an intricate collision of techniques and mediums within the smallest of spaces.
March 19, 2013, 8:30am
The Photographer’s Painter: Mark Takamichi Miller
A child’s road trip is an unlikely painting subject, on a number of levels. Since children do not drive, rarely are they associated with the road trip concept otherwise so prevalent in American culture; yet artist Mark Takamichi Miller centers his latest body of paintings on view at Seattle’s 4Culture Gallery on this unusual idea.
February 14, 2013, 8:30am
Rainbows, Rose Bushes and Carcasses: Chase Westfall’s Delicate Balances
The gray season of the Pacific Northwest has arrived in full force, impelling many of us who inhabit this dark corner of the country to seek a dose of color and a break from the monotony in more inviting environs.
February 01, 2013, 8:30am
NAP Contributor Tribute
In case you haven't noticed, we have the best art writers in the world. Seriously, it's true. Our blog contributors are stationed all over the country, scoping out shows, visiting studios, and interviewing the best contemporary painters in the art world. Recently we asked our most prolific bloggers to answer a few questions about themselves and their thoughts on 2012. It's your chance to get to know a handful of the talented individuals that bring you the New American Paintings/Blog! There are many more writers, and we hope to feature them soon.
Thanks to everyone that contributes to our blog, helping us bring our readers rich and exciting content on a daily basis!
January 15, 2013, 10:56am
Slanted and Enchanted: The Wonders of Jeffrey Simmons’s Watercolors
Jeffrey Simmons’s show Watercolors refuses to conform to the expected behavior of its medium. Where watercolor works traditionally speak a nebulous language of soft borders and fading hues, Simmons’ works on paper in his seventh solo show at Greg Kucera Gallery articulate strong colors and fine lines with the utmost precision. Even when the color bands within his abstracted forms blur, their gestures radiate with strict intention.
November 30, 2012, 8:30am
Unsolved Collections: The Paintings of Sarah Awad’s Transference and Speculation
Sarah Awad’s orange and white parachute beams broadly like sunshine across the confines of its modest canvas. Sharing the stage with a blue alligator head, a shiny space shuttle and a set of turquoise artillery, bold objects dominate the artist’s new show Transference and Speculation at Seattle’s James Harris Gallery.
October 19, 2012, 8:25am
Luscious Darkness: Ellen Ziegler’s Body Double
The darkness of Seattle’s upper latitude slips quietly into place as soon as summer ends, the long afternoon light exchanged for gray afternoons and early sunsets. A number of the city’s October exhibitions reflected these seasonal transitions with darker tones and a more sinister subtext, including SOIL’s Teeth, Gallery 110’s Urban Martyrs and Roq la Rue’s Pureheart. While less outwardly macabre than others, Seattle artist Ellen Ziegler brings both physical and psychological darkness into play through her latest series
September 28, 2012, 8:25am
The Space Between: Julia Mangold’s Drawings and Sculpture
The three largest sculptures of Julia Mangold’s Drawings and Sculpture stare, despite being compilations of black, geometric fragments that do not readily read as anthropomorphic. These sculptures made of wood covered in a thick sheen of wax stare not only because they stand at eye level, but their physical masses also emit the weight and form of a standard human when standing beside them. The block forms that comprise their structures protrude and retract strategically, shifting the overall sculptural shapes without giving any sense of being precarious; these staring stacks do not back down.
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